North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services

This new laboratory and office building houses the Veterinary, Food and Drug Protection, Structural Pest Control and Pesticides, Motor Fuels and Standards laboratories. The laboratories and programs provide a wide range of services and tests that play a critical role in protecting the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of North Carolina.

The 80,000-gsf of laboratory spaces span a wide range of uses, including veterinary diagnostics, necropsy suites, virology/serology, bacteriology, pathology, microbiology, whole genome sequencing, histology, metrology, motor fuel combustion research, high bay space, BSL2 and flex BSL3 capabilities and more.

The Food and Drug Protection section include labs to store, grind, test, separate, weigh, extract and analyze various samples of seeds, food, feed, fertilizer and grain moisture.

The new facility consolidates six lab buildings that are an average of 40 years old. The new facility houses about 200 people and accommodates modern and future equipment, optimizes workflows and prepares for program growth and future program needs.

The NCDA&CS maximizes overall building efficiency and expand capacity for each laboratory by co-locating separate divisions with similar requirements close to one another.

The new structure is oriented on the site based on best practices for energy efficiency, site infrastructure requirements, grading, prominence, circulation and adjacency requirements.

“HERA is an excellent lab planner. They took four very different labs and put them into one building. Many issues had to be dealt with, such as cross contamination between labs, safety, adequate spacing, etc. They were great to work with and provided us with a layout that met our requirements.”

– Ron Willett, Agricultural Sciences, Center Complex Manager